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Grey Gardens , the feature film on HBO that premieres this weekend, is a mixed bag. Jessica Lange is perfection. Drew Barrymore does some of her best work ever in a dramatic role that hooks into her personal flamboyance and sadness. But the film, which lays heavily on the making of and repeated recreations...
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Zac Efron is cute. Leslie Mann is cute. Thomas Lennon is Tony Randall. Can I stop there? Michelle Trachtenberg, at 23, is getting a little creepy playing 17-year-old goth virgins, though it certainly is not her fault that she has perfect skin and young looks and unless she wants to take jobs where she...
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State of Play sets itself up to be a strong contender for a now all too rare genre of film… the complicated-story but genre-simplistic morality tale as a thriller. Lumet to Pakula to Pollack to Bourne. The problem with State of Play is that it fails in this ambition on two fairly serious fronts. First...
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How do I start this? Jody Hill… save your money. The clock is ticking on this spectacularly overrated writer/director. He just got a second season pick-up for the mediocre Eastbound & Down. Observe & Report is coming out with some love from the people who so want to love this guy’s style of hateful...
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One doesn't expect "Domestic Violence, Pt 1" to be so refreshing. But Frederick Wiseman's 2001 six and a half hour document of a shelter in Tampa, FL is so square that it's spectacularly hip in this era of the Look At Me doc. No narration, no music, no director's statement of...
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Apologies for whipping out the m-word, but mumblecore always seemed to me to be defined by its choreography of conflict avoidance. Its characters are so vague about they want and what they think because what they definitely don't want is to lay those things out and risk disagreement, rejection or...
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From the great Kyle C
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The Watchmen pre-game checklist is, indeed, the buzz of many writers. But after seeing the film, not so much. Big blue ***? Not that big a deal, albeit utterly unnecessary. Ultraviolence? Not for kids, and interestingly one of the areas where Mr. Snyder decided to be less faithful to the graphic novel...
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One of the blog commenters can't seem to separate why Slumdog won from why The Dark Knight was not nominated. In response, I found myself explaining my TDK issues – which are not nearly as severe as he constantly claims – in yet another way… so I thought I would share… I have never said Dark Knight...
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I haven’t exactly rushed out my 2008 Top Ten list. Really, I just didn’t much feel like it. There are plenty of movies I truly admire, but somehow, my passion is just not inflamed as it should be at the end of the year. Here are 21 runners up: Battle For Haditha, Beaufort, Beauty in Trouble, Blindness...
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I really don’t feel like reviewing Seven Pounds today. I’m not sure that I will feel like reviewing it any day soon. Why? Because it is a “feel” movie, not an “intellectualize” movie. As a result, I have been explaining, in private conversations since I saw the film, that it is exactly the kind of movie...
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The problem with Valkyrie is really simple… it was a terrible idea when they started and nothing that a large group of very talented people did could overcome the core problem of this story. It’s a movie about a vain loser that doesn’t want to be about failure. There is a way to make a movie about failure...
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I want to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button again before really digging into it. (Idiots who think that "yay" or "nay" is the same as a review deserve the shallow level of thought they embody.) That said, what is intensely striking about the film, for me, besides the beautiful...
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I love Luhrmann. I do. I think he is one of those directors who has incredibly good taste, loves to walk on the tightrope without a net (his logo at the top of Australia includes the line – paraphrased – “A Life Live Without Risk Is A Life Only Half Lived”), delivers images and conceits that no one else...
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The films here in Amsterdam have been quite good. I am sad to be headed home before seeing more of them… many, many intriguing titles will turn up in the second half. But the two clear home runs for me were nearly back to back. Both were, not shockingly, by veterans. First, Vikram Jayanti has a new-ish...